Word: humorously
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...essential Waugh hero is a British Don Quixote dejectedly tilting at the 20th century. His troubles begin with a code of honor that is ill suited for campaigns in society or on the battlefield. Humor is shaped by innumerable collisions with bad manners, bad writing, bad architecture and bad service...
First he injected a touch of understated humor: "I've been coming to this city in one capacity or another for nearly 40 years, and I'm beginning to like the place. Wouldn't mind living here, in fact." (Laughter.) The smile faded. Next came a moment of graciousness: "I believe President Carter is a sincere, patriotic, hard-working man who wants very much to have a successful Administration." (A pause.) "But these qualities are insufficient to provide effective leadership...
Such moments aside, The Great Train Robbery is a curiously enervated affair. In his previous films, Westworld and Coma, Crichton has shown a gut instinct for creating nasty suspense. His movies looked sloppy, but fiendish humor and scare tactics helped paper over the visual lapses. Train Robbery, paradoxically, looks gorgeous but lacks bite and narrative rhythm. The thieves carry out their complex scheme in a series of repetitive, evenly paced sequences, most of which involve the hijacking of keys to a safe. When you've seen one key theft, you've seen them all. The robberies...
...drag; Sutherland, a Quentin Crisp, queer before it became chic, is doomed by his undersized member, a homosexual leper. With his speed and Quaaludes, his chiffons and Estee Lauder and bridge games and Egyptian groupies, Sutherland is Holleran's one truly brilliant creation. Sutherland provides much of the bitchy humor that makes Dancer, if nothing else, one of the funnier books of the year...
...childlike seriousness. This aura is, in turn, scientifically punctured by the sickeningly helpful middle-Americans and mysterious vodka-guzzling Russians who emerge from the shadows to help separate the dictator from his people. Blending caricature and truth, Updike thus manages a type of satire that helps heal over with humor what it has just incised--a satisfying trick...